and the stars will fall for you
by Dorplet
Summary: "It starts off small, with lingering gazes upon his rough pencil sketches, rendering a world of beauty in shadow and graphite alone." Or, how Taki eventually finds Mitsuha. Seen through the eyes of an outsider.


a/n: this was sitting in my word doc for 3 years, so I polished it up a bit. here is my small contribution to one of my favourite movies, ever!

* * *

It starts off small, just shy, secretive glances over her shoulder; a quick glimpse of dark green eyes and she turns back, blushing hard enough to set the sky on fire. It starts off small, just polite nods to each other when they pass in the hallway, watching him as he heads off to class, his hair in his permanently ruffled state and his shirt halfway tucked out. It starts off small, with lingering gazes upon his rough pencil sketches, rendering a world of beauty in shadow and graphite alone.

It started off small.

Now she stays back past her dismissal time and hides in the classroom, staring at him shoot hoops with his two friends, hoping that he'll see her watching him, and at the same time utterly terrified of that happening. She trails behind them when they tire and head home, and if she's lucky enough, she sometimes ends up on the same train as him, pressed together like sardines amongst the strangers. Once, the train was so crowded that she found herself smack against him, back to back, feeling the quiet rhythm of his breathing and hardly daring to breathe herself.

It's no surprise to her that he fails to take any notice of her – after all, she's so plain, limp dark bangs hiding half of her face, always scuttering back into the background, and he's Taki, he with his easy-going manner and his faraway eyes and – and he's always surrounded by girls, but he doesn't pay any attention to them. Any of them.

He has a tendency to gaze out of the window with a pencil in his idle hand and his cheek cradled on the other, as if looking for something that he can never quite find; a wisp, a trail that leads to neverwhere. It's rumoured that he once skipped school just to go to Itomori, but she can never figure out how and why the hollow, dead crater of a meteor would enthrall him so. Even so, whenever she manages to catch rare glimpses of the sketchbook he's always doodling in, it's filled with unmistakable images of the quaint little town on the border of a lake.

She has tried so hard to find a way to talk to him and failed so many times, but her chance comes one day when she spots the sketchbook he's left lying in class.

She flips it open and it's filled with images of the ruined town, just like she's expected. It's not right, she knows, not right to go prying into his world, his _mind_, but she can't help herself. It's as though a compulsion has seized her, making her feverishly turn the pages, looking for something – _someone_, she thinks.

The sketchbook itself is chock full of details: the ivy creeping down the side of a tower, the evening sunlight shimmering on the water, and the outlines of people, walking along the streets, filled in with excruciating care and labour. It's almost as if he _knows_ the people, he's drawn them so well, captured them in a twirl here, a skip there and their expressions range from happiness to curiousity to fear. And the town itself is laid out in full glory, every nook and cranny of it, from the corner store to the worn stone steps to the delicate traces of a temple. Certain sketches have pale streaks etching the sky overhead, a one-way path filled with song and beauty and destruction. _Let there be light_.

She finds it at last, tucked away on the final page amongst other drawings of an intricate sketch of braided cords, a vending machine, a lone tree in the centre of a crater.

The silhouette of a girl with a ribbon trailing from her hair, looking away into the distance.

She traces the outline of the girl with her fingertips. It doesn't resemble anyone in their school, or anyone she knows, but her lips tremble as she stares at the unknown, nameless girl.

Carefully, she shuts the book and heads downstairs to look for Taki.

* * *

Her first spoken encounter with him goes almost as bad as she feared; she stutters, doesn't meet his eyes, and nearly trips over her feet when she walks up to him. He takes the book and comments that he's seen her around and asks for her name. Her legs are already as weak as jelly, and it's only intensified further when he offers to accompany her on the way home. Mute with excitement and nerves, she can only nod frantically.

"Thanks for returning my sketchbook," he says as they make their way towards the station, the golden orange sun beginning to set overhead. "It means a lot to me."

She hesitates, and then smiles. "You're welcome."

"It's of Itomori, you know. The town that the meteor fell on."

"You seem to know it very well," she ventures.

Taki rubs his face, his eyebrows scrunched together. "It's strange. I feel like I do. I feel like I've lived there, even though I visited it only after the meteor fell, and all that remained was a crater. In fact," he draws a deep breath, looking sheepish. "I spent the night there on the side of a mountain. Can you believe it?"

She can't help but giggle at the thought of that. "Really?"

"Yeah," he admits. "I woke up with leaves in my hair and dead bugs on my backpack."

"Maybe you were ill or dreaming," she says carefully, not wanting to offend him.

They've reached the station at this point, and begin to head up the escalator, jostled by people left and right. The bustle of the crowd is overwhelming and so loud that she has to strain to hear his reply.

"Maybe," he says, looking downward. "Maybe it was all just a dream."

* * *

Slowly but surely, they become closer. He ends up going home with her every day after that, and each time he lets slip more about his life; how his mother died when he was very young, how he used to have a crush on his supervisor at work, how he used to be completely obsessed with the Itomori incident and covered his bedroom with drawings of it. When she points out that he's still obsessed with Itomori, he merely laughs and ruffles her hair, and her heartbeat triples.

In turn, she confides in him – about her insecurities, her fears, her dream of moving to the countryside (she's always had a green thumb), how she feels like Tokyo spins too fast for her to ever catch up and hang on, and he nods in understanding.

"I think that's why I went to Itomori," he muses. "I wanted to see the countryside for myself."

"Is it beautiful?"

Taki pauses and thinks, his eyebrows scrunching up _just so_. "It was – it still is," he corrects himself. "You can still see how it used to be, you know. There's something mystical about it, something hidden in the craters and … I don't know. It's all gray and dusty and barren, but there's a sort of quiet beauty underneath it all. I wish I could have seen the meteor falling – the sky would be full of colours, and the world would be ablaze in light..."

She smiles. "You should be a writer."

"Writing is _not_ my thing and you should know that," he laughs, poking her in the side. "After all, aren't you the one who always edits my essays?"

She tries to banter back, but her voice trails off halfway. "That's – that's only because I have no choice."

"Hey, at least I pay for your movie ticket," he says, and then drags her into the cinema. The whole time they watch the action show full of guns and explosions, all she can think of is his presence next to her. His arm is sorely distracting and her hand _twitches_, but she tucks her hands into her lap and digs her nails into her skin.

Two hours has never felt so long and so short.

* * *

One day, they're sitting in the park, watching the children feed the squawking white ducks at the pond, when he casually leans over and tucks her bangs behind her ear. She freezes.

"You shouldn't hide behind your hair so much," he says, smiling. "Don't be afraid to show the world who you really are."

Her face aflame, she can barely speak, but she starts wearing hairbands and the like afterwards.

It's still a futile attempt, as much as she tries to deny it – no matter what she wears, floral dresses in the spring or cute coats in autumn – he doesn't pay her a second glance, just like how he treats every other girl in his life.

She doesn't mind. It's enough to be next to him, to be his friend. To listen to him when he's complaining or when he's down. To accompany him to his favourite cafe and debate over whether the chocolate cake or the lemon tart is a better dessert. To sit in his bedroom as the sun goes down and watch him sketch and create worlds on paper. Half the time it feels as though he _exists_ on paper, too, like he's not bound to this earth...

"I wonder when you'll ever get tired of me," Taka says, throwing an eraser at her. It catches her off-guard and she squeaks, dropping her textbook.

"Um, what?"

Taki patiently repeats himself and her mind instantly goes blank. "I - I don't think I will," she manages to get out.

He grins at her, the setting sun turning his hair brown and illuminating his eyes. "_I _would get sick of me."

She smiles back. "It's a good thing I'm not you."

"Yeah," he says flippantly, leaning back on his bed. "It is."

When the graduation dance rolls around, he ends up going alone, and to her surprise, she's asked out by his bespectacled friend instead. The night turns out to be better than she expected, full of laughter and a whirlwind of giddiness, but it's not _him_, and she returns home alone.

Graduation is a blur to her of photographs and tearful goodbyes and promises to keep in touch, but it all falls away when she sees him with his graduation cap perched jauntily on his disheveled hair. She doesn't care who sees her as she steps forward to give him a big, warm hug, and she mumbles the words that she'll never dare to say into the sleeves of his gown.

When she steps back, her eyes glisten with tears.

* * *

She's hired almost straightaway, being set to work on the brand new vertical gardens that are beginning to dot the city skyline. She loves her job, and her colleagues are friendly and welcoming. Still, she can't help but worry about Taki – he's been to eight interviews already and none of them have succeeded, and every time she sees a shooting star she closes her eyes and wishes upon it for him.

It's a bright sunny day in Tokyo when she gets a call from him, his voice trembling and filled with happiness like she's never heard before. "I found _her_."

"Who is her?" she asks, but he's already hung up.

And when she meets Mitsuha, when she sees the shape of the girl she saw so long ago, lovingly drawn with care, she _knows_. She knows that he's been in love with this girl all along, the girl who's from Itomori, the girl he somehow knows and loves through some process she can never being to imagine. She knows all this, but that doesn't make the pain any less, and she barely gets out a smile through gritted teeth before making an excuse to leave.

On her bed, she cradles the photograph that they took on the graduation day, Taki and her – her hair swept to one side by the wind, her mouth stretched widely in a grin, and a laughing Taki, but on closer inspection, the smile doesn't quite reach his eyes. They remain misty and inscrutable, fixated upon a person he saw a long, long, time ago.

He was not hers. He was never hers.

She does her best to avoid the blissful couple after that and curls up in her room for days at a stretch, overwhelmed by a crushing depression. When Taki calls her, she lets it ring and ring without answering, and he sends her messages that grow increasingly desperate in tone. But she can't bring herself to answer them, can't bring herself to say that she only wants the best for him, that she's _happy– _

When the knock she's been waiting for finally sounds, she puts on a brave face and answers the door, but it's not Taki on the step. Instead, the sunlight glints off his spectacles, and his face is so full of concern that she cannot help but fall into his arms, sobbing with the renewed pain of heartbreak all over again.

"I know," is all he says, patting her back. "I know."

"I – I – it _hurts_."

"Look at me," he says, voice quiet and full of conviction. "Look at me."

She does, her watery eyes trembling. "You love him, don't you?" he asks.

"Yes," she breathes. _So much_.

"Be happy for him, then. He's happy – he's the happiest he's ever been, and he's worried about you. You're only making yourself and him unhappy by being like this."

She shakes her head, numb with disbelief. "He – I – this won't affect him -"

"Don't be stupid," he says, half-exasperated and half-laughing. "You're one of his best friends, and he cares about you. _We _care about you and we want you to be happy, too. So don't hurt yourself anymore, please."

She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. "I'll… I'll try."

He reaches forward and takes her hands in his. "And I will be there to help."

* * *

It starts off small.

It starts off small, with simple outings. To the park, where she and Taki used to feed bread to the ducks. But this time the two of them walk off the path, and he shows her a secret garden she had never seen before, full of wild herbs and weeds. She breathes in the mixed scents and stares, amazed, at the blossoms scattered on the stone walls and pavements. To the movies, where she spills a drink in his lap by accident but he simply laughs and wipes it off with a tissue. He grabs her hand unabashedly during all the jump-scares and she teases him so badly about it that his whole face turns red.

He gives her a homemade card on her birthday. When she opens it, she sees a laboriously drawn out pencil sketch of her. He's no artist and he never will be, but she can see the amount of effort he's put into it – the crossed-out lines, the eraser dust that still sticks to the card. And even though he's made her eyes look lopsided and given her a receding hairline, she puts it up at her office desk and looks at it whenever she feels down.

Now and then she meets up with Taki and Mitsuha, and their interaction doesn't pain her as much as before. In fact, she thinks, seeing Taki with her is like seeing a completely different Taki. He was always half in this world when she knew him, but with Mitsuha, he's _alive_.

He talks – well, they both talk a lot, their voices overlapping in harmony – and he's constantly staring at Mitsuha, tucking her hair behind her ears and finding excuses to touch her cheek. Her hand. Her shoulder. Mitsuha, for her part, rolls her eyes and bats his hands away, but she too cannot help but look at Taki and laugh and smile. And to her surprise, she _likes_ Mitsuha. The girl is witty and smart and she doesn't take any of Taki's bullshit and is everything she's _not_. She can see why Taki likes – no, _loves_ her.

It _should_ hurt, but she's alright. She's doing fine. Better than fine, actually. Because _he_ is there on her rainy days, her sunny days, her gray days, and everything in-between.

Taki and Mitsuha don't help, because they are _constantly_ teasing them about being together, and more than once Mitsuha has taken her aside and asked her whether she _really_ just sees him as a_ friend_, and nothing more? She stammers out some response, but the older girl simply brushes it off and gives her a knowing smirk.

And then she can't help but _wonder_, too.

* * *

It starts off small, with her catching herself staring at him more than necessary, noticing his dark eyes, his wide smile, his laughter –

Now she takes his hand and they walk along the paths, through snow and rain and falling leaves, and now he helps her to sketch out her latest design and now she too is no longer a wallflower, he brings out a side of her that she didn't even knew _existed_. With him around, she is transformed; she _blooms_.

And on the day she finally gathers up the courage to tell him how she feels, he simply tells her that she's three years behind and she throws her arms around him and he twirls her around.

_This is it_, she thinks, her head spinning and the sky whirling in an endless spiral over her head, _this is how the stars all fall_.

* * *

It starts off small, but it doesn't end.

**fin.**


End file.
